


Hogwarts Kitten Nightmare

by coyotesuspect



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, MWPP Era, Marauders' Era, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-10
Updated: 2013-01-10
Packaged: 2017-11-24 08:30:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/632449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coyotesuspect/pseuds/coyotesuspect
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James decides to train a kitten circus to impress Evans. Things do not go as planned. MWPP era. Remus/Sirius pre-slash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hogwarts Kitten Nightmare

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote in 2010 this for familiardevil@lj as part of a series of bets we had regarding the (soccer) World Cup. Then, as now, I thank scorpiod1@lj and cherie_morte@lj for their encouragement and enthusiasm. Title from the similarly titled song "Paper Kitten Nightmare" by Margot & the Nuclear So and So's.

It’s Sunday afternoon, edging into Sunday evening, and nothing has exploded all weekend. Which should, Remus realizes later, have been a tip off. But he’s been too busy studying for OWLs lately to have anything on his mind other than potions and charms and _Merlin help him he is going to fail everything and be sent to live in the wilds of the Forbidden Forest and his only comfort will be that Sirius will probably drop out of a school on a lark and join him and oh god how will they survive?_

Still, it shouldn’t be as much a surprise as it is when he opens the door to his dormitory to find James’s four poster bed entirely covered in…kittens. 

He takes a step back, closes the door, and opens it again.

James’s bed is still covered in kittens. Kittens in clown costumes. It’s not the strangest thing he has ever seen in this room, but it certainly makes the top five. 

“Er,” he says, announcing himself to the room at large. “Hullo?”

A wild-haired figure leaps up from the mass of kittens. James. He’s looking rather more manic than usual, glasses hanging skewed off one ear and his hair resembling a bush that’s had an unfortunate encounter with a blind and clumsy gamekeeper.

“Moony!” says James, with rather more force and cheer than Remus thinks is sincere. “Exactly the chap I wanted to see.”

“That doesn’t bode well,” says Remus truthfully. “And what in Merlin’s pants are you doing?” He considers casually pointing to his Prefect badge, but decides against it. Even throwing his Prefect’s badge at James head wouldn’t do any good once James has set his mind on something.

“Two words,” answers James dramatically. He pauses and adjusts his glasses, then fixes Remus with a somber gaze as he enunciates carefully, “Kitten. Circus.”

Remus stares at him.

“I,” he says. He frowns. He looks back at the kittens on James’s bed. They seem to be trying to escape. Or organize. It’s hard to tell. Either way, he is probably going to be killed by kittens in his sleep tonight. He looks back at James. “What?”

“It’s brilliant!” says James, gesticulating wildly. “It will be the most impressive thing anyone’s ever seen. You’ve heard the expression ‘herding cats;’ think how magnificent it will be when I have them doing somersaults!”

Remus doesn’t need to ask who “anyone” is. There can be only person James would try so hard to impress.

“Now help a bloke out,” commands James. “Lola here’s being rather uncooperative.” 

James turns around. There’s a kitten clinging to the back of his robe, a look of grim determination on its tiny face.

“Prongs,” says Remus, more calmly than he feels, “are you sure this is a good idea?” 

He reaches tentatively for the kitten. It hisses at him and lets go with one paw to swipe at his fingers. He retreats.

“Of course I’m sure!” cries James. “Evans loves kittens.”

Padfoot gives a disgusted snort. It’s the first time Remus has noticed him in the room, but he sees him now, curled up on the edge of Remus’s bed, the one farthest away from James, and eyeing the kittens distrustfully. That’s also when Remus realizes someone is missing.

“Where’s Wormtail?” 

James turns around, half-dancing in an attempt to get the kitten off. He looks guilty. 

“Prongs,” says Remus warningly.

“He, uh, didn’t appreciate being used as a treat for good behavior.”

“James!” shouts Remus.

“I wasn’t actually going to feed him to them,” protests James sulkily. “He was just, you know, an incentive.”

Padfoot barks in disbelief. James glares at him.

“Well no one asked you,” he snaps. “Besides, I don’t see you coming up with any bright ideas.”

Padfoot lifts his head imperiously. There’s a shimmer and a shift, and the dog is replaced by dark haired, equally imperious fifteen year old boy, sitting crosslegged on the bed.

“I don’t need to come up with any bright ideas,” he says. “I’m not suffering from the pangs of unrequited love.”

James can barely repress a smile at that. “Liar,” he shoots out.

Sirius’s face darkens. “I admitted that under duress. You said you wouldn’t bring it up.”

“All’s fair in love and war, etcetera, etcetera,” replies James serenely. 

“What?” interrupts Remus, feeling suddenly and unaccountably annoyed. “You’re keeping secrets now, Padfoot?”

Sirius swears and looks everywhere but at Remus. “You’re a manipulative bastard, Potter.”

“A manipulative bastard who’s about to be the ringleader of a kitten circus.”

Remus glares at them both. “Fine,” he snaps. “You two have your fun. I have to go study.”

“Moony!” protests Sirius as Remus storms back out. “Don’t-” Remus slams the door before Sirius can finish whatever he’s saying, but, after he pauses on the doorstep, he does make out a muffled, “Wanker,” followed by a sharp yelp of pain that could only be one of the kittens biting James.

***

Remus spends the next two hours bent over his Charms textbook in the library. It’s quiet and pleasant and the Hufflepuff couple he finds making out in his usual study place are considerably more impressed by his Prefect’s badge than James or Sirius will ever be.

He’s filled about a foot of parchment with notes and is just beginning to get hungry when his solitude is interrupted.

“I’m going to kill him,” announces Sirius. He drops into the chair next to Remus, one hand thrown across his forehead. “It’ll be a great service to mankind really. God help the world if James Potter ever spawns.”

“You didn’t have to help him. Just let out whatever this big secret is of yours and he’ll have no power over you.” Remus steadily ignores looking at Sirius, concentrating entirely on the text before him. Memory charms.

“Let loose the secret of the love of my life?” says Sirius with wide, mock-scandalized eyes. “And ruin my unsullied reputation as a swinging bachelor? Moony, you ask too much. I prefer to suffer in agonizing silence. It’s more poetic.”

Remus sighs, the annoyance from earlier trickling back in. “Why are you here Sirius?” he asks. “I’m studying.”

Sirius presses his forehead against Remus’s shoulder, a placating gesture. “What are you studying?” he asks. “And why? You’re going to ace everything regardless.”

“Your confidence in me is truly a comfort and an inspiration,” says Remus dryly. He taps his quill against the pages of the book and winces as a blot of ink wipes out a word. “I’m reading up on Charms.”

“Excellent!” says Sirius brightly. “This will give you a chance to practice.”

He thrusts his arm out to Remus with a sorrowful look. It’s scored with tiny red marks. “Those kittens are mean.”

“Of course they’re mean. You’re making them do somersaults; it’s unnatural.”

Sirius amps up the sad puppy look. “It’s all Prongs’s fault,” he pouts. “And he kicked me out of the room after I jinxed two of them into waltzing.”

“You’re an awful person,” says Remus, wrapping his hand around Sirius’s wrist; he can feel the rapid flutter of Sirius’s pulse beneath his fingers. “This is animal cruelty. I hope you get rabies.” 

“But then who will sacrifice himself to Prong’s madness?” demands Sirius. He’s gone very still, is watching Remus intently through lidded eyes. 

Remus feels himself flush. It’s not like he’s going to fuck a simple healing charm up. Sirius’s scratches are very minor, something Remus has been able to heal since his first year at Hogwarts. He’s got a deft hand at healing charms, but it’s more out of necessity than any real knack. 

“If I go frothing at the mouth mad, James will just enlist you as his number two and your poor prefect Moony brain will explode from all the rule breaking you’re forced to do.”

“You’re already frothing at the mouth mad,” replies Remus. “And I break nearly as many rules as you do, Padfoot. Thank you very much.”

Sirius’s smile is dark and slanted. “Yeah,” he agrees softly, still unnaturally still. “But you don’t enjoy it nearly as much as you should.”

Remus flushes even deeper. He has no idea how to reply or what Sirius could even be implying, so he doesn’t say anything. He lays the tip of his wand against the inside of Sirius’s elbow and mutters the incantation. Blue sparks shoot out, spiraling over Sirius’s elbow and down his arm. The scratches turn to pink then white then fade away entirely to the natural color of Sirius’s skin. Remus continues to hold onto Sirius’s wrist, longer than he should.

Finally, Sirius pulls away.

“Thanks,” he says quietly. Then, impatiently: “Now come on.” He stands and grabs Remus by the collar of his robe, dragging him to his feet. Remus barely has time to grab his Charms textbook and stuff it in his bag. “James is, er, presenting at dinner. I don’t want to miss it.”

***

Most of Hogwarts is already seated by the time Remus and Sirius arrive at dinner, but James is nowhere to be seen. They do find Peter, looking rather disgruntled at the end of the table. He smiles when he sees them though, and Remus is relieved that James’s shenanigans haven’t put the poor guy into too foul a mood. Merlin knows James would be waking up in drag on the Quidditch pitch if he’d tried to feed Remus to a swarm of kittens.

“How’s Prongs?” asks Peter immediately. “Is he still…” He flaps a hand in the air, which Remus assumes means something along the lines of completely out of his mind.

“Spot on Wormtail,” says Sirius with a quick, jaunty salute. He throws an arm around Remus’s shoulder, casual and familiar, and leans across the table to speak in a stage-whisper. “He should be making his grand entrance any moment now.”

A moment ticks by. Lily Evans laughs halfway the table. Remus steals a roll from Sirius. Peter looks nervous. No James appears.

Then the doors of the Great Hall open slightly, and James slips through. He scans the Gryffindor table, gaze lingering momentarily on Evans, then brightening when he spots the three of them. 

“Some entrance,” remarks Remus when James finally sits down next to Peter. James winks at him.

“All in due time, Moony. Have a bit of patience.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a kitten. Remus thinks it’s the same one that had clung so stoically to James earlier, but he can’t be sure. If it is, it’s much meeker now, a folded note gripped tightly in its mouth.

“What’s the note say?” asks Peter as they watch James place the kitten gently on the table. 

James shrugs; he’s not really paying attention to them. Instead, he taps his wand gently against the kitten’s back and mutters a short word. The kitten shivers all over, just once, then perks its head up and begins trotting happily in the direction of Evans. 

It stops once it reaches her and drops the note directly onto her steak and kidney pie. Her friends surrounding her all immediately start cooing at the kitten, one of them even swiping it up in her hand and cuddling it to her chest. Lily just eyes it suspiciously, smart enough to know better than to trust strange animals in a place like this. But she opens the note.

She mouths the words as she reads them to herself. Look up.

Suddenly, Remus hears the flapping of wings.

Through the window of the Great Hall that the owls normally enter, there is a dark, purring cloud. 

Remus’s eyes bug out. “Why would he give them wings?!”

James howls with glee and jumps to his feet, punching the air. Next to Remus, Sirius goes slack with laughter, one arm still around Remus, but the other pressed against his stomach as he doubles over. 

The kittens fly in formation. They swoop three times around the Great Hall, and an audible shock goes up from the students. There’s chaos at the teacher’s table already as McGonagall wrestles with the year’s DADA professor for his wand, apparently unwilling to let him shoot down a kitten. Their purring sounds like a Muggle aircraft, and, after the third loop is completed, they come to hover over the Gryffindor table, in perfect view of Evans as she gapes up in shock. 

For a brief and glorious moment, they spell out the words, “Date me, Lily Evans?”

And then all hell breaks loose. 

From somewhere, and Sirius will swear on the Map later it comes from the Slytherin table, specifically Snape, a jinx comes hurtling into the kitten crowd. Miraculously, it manages to miss all of them- further proof, Sirius cries later, that Slytherins have notoriously poor aim, but it’s enough to set them howling. Then they do more than just howl.

They begin to divebomb the table.

Evans shrieks in dismay and James looks suddenly horrified at the sound. He remains frozen for a brief second. He sprints off to save her. Peter makes an aborted move to follow him, but ends up staying behind. He stares at Remus and Sirius.

“What do we do?” he asks, voice quavering. A kitten goes swooping by Remus’s head. He curses and ducks while Sirius jumps onto the bench, swinging his arm at the kitten in an attempt to knock it out of the air.

“Padfoot!” hisses Remus, tugging at Sirius’s robe. “Sit down! You can’t hurt them! They’re kittens for God’s sake.”

“They have razor sharp claws and wings. They’re not defenseless,” points out Sirius, but he sits down all the same. Peter has disappeared.

The rest of the school seems to be battling with the same moral dilemma. No one wants to shoot a kitten out of the air, but no one wants a face full of clawing, hissing animal either. Most seem to be coping with the issue by fleeing, and a great bottleneck has sprung up at the entrance.

Sirius dives under the table and pulls Remus down under with him. Distantly, Remus can make out the sound of James shouting in pain.

Sirius sighs. “I really fucking hate cats,” he mutters.

Remus nods his agreement and shifts awkwardly. It’s cramped under the table, and suddenly his proximity to Sirius is more important than the tiny, furry death currently threatening them. Sirius is laying half on top of him, one palm spread protectively over Remus’s collarbone. 

It takes Remus a moment to realize what he’s doing.

“Are you shielding me with your body?” he demands, outraged.

“Uh,” says Sirius. He smiles, chagrined. “Yes?”

Remus shoves him off. Sirius yelps as his head smacks into the bottom of the table.

“Wanker,” fumes Remus. He pulls his wand out of his pocket. “This is ridiculous,” he adds tartly. “We’re Gryffindors, and we’re hiding under a table from kittens.”

“Razor sharp claws,” reminds Sirius. “And teeth. Also, they have wings.”

“Somehow, I think we’ll survive,” says Remus. He gets ready to roll out from under the table. “Let’s go then. There’s the House Elf entrance in the back we can use to get out.”

Sirius makes a face at him. “I’m only doing this because you’re prettier and more charismatic than Prongs is.”

“Most people are,” says Remus cheerfully. He throws himself out from under the table; Sirius follows. 

They charge. 

-End


End file.
